How many hours would it take you to complete a three-dimensional jigsaw of 1745 pieces?

If your jigsaw is made of WoodBlocX, the answer is a leisurely few days.

My plan for the former shrubbery involved three raised beds. The raising was partly to reduce the amount of kneeling and bending, as I’ve become stiffer since my accident a couple of years ago, and partly to obviate the need to dig out massive amounts of roots of the former occupants of the area and probably knacker my back even more in the process.

I’d built two of the three beds, simple L-shape and square, in 2014. Last year I filled the gap in the middle with my “grand design.” Well actually it was my “grand sketch plan.” The transformation of that into a full design was handled by one of the guys at WoodBlocX in Scotland. This bespoke design work is, by the way, a free service if none of their standard kit designs suits your garden.

Of course, there’s always a degree of preparation. I had to transform the corner of the garden from this:

Via this:

To this:

Removing a 20-something-feet-tall conifer, two equally tall laurel bushes and a hazel tree plus topping a holly tree, which I hope to transform into a holly bush over time, took a bit of effort (Co-codamol is my friend!). Two other over-large laurels had been brought under control when I built the two raised beds last year though both needed further pruning.

I tackled the heavy prep work over a couple of weeks, fitting it in with the usual range of garden tasks such as hedge-trimming, weeding, planting and beer-drinking. I’d expected it to take longer and suddenly realising that I was ready to build but delivery wasn’t for another week was a bit frustrating. I relieved the boredom by ordering a new garden shed and a new greenhouse, guaranteeing an exciting, if rather busy, summer. I also emptied the smaller of my two then-existing sheds to give me somewhere convenient to lay out the WoodBlocX components.

But the day dawned and there appeared on my drive:

And I realised I’d underestimated the volume of the components.

First job was to check the inventory and all the components to make sure everything was ok.

Two hours later, the components were separated, sorted and stacked in my garden sheds (the smaller shed wasn’t big enough so there was a panic reorganisation of the larger one) and the garage. Something liquid beckoned.

I’ll be building in my next post.